Let’s say you’re an Olympic athlete.  (Note: this theoretical exercise also grants you permission to tell the object of your passions at the bar tonight that you are indeed an Olympic athlete.)  You’ve flown hundreds of thousands of miles over the last four years to train and participate in warm-up events and qualifying tournaments. You feel like you’ve driven twice as far.

An entire nation has spent billions of dollars on special construction projects just so you can ply your trade once on an international stage.  An armada of media and tourists have burned all kinds of petrol and coal to get to your event from points astrewn and broadcast your image back to their home nations.  The environment has been scarred and tattered for the privilege of being declared champion.

And you win!  When you do, you can’t help but notice that your podium feels soft and rickety.  That’s when you notice it’s made of recycled cardboard and has the Olympic logo painted on it with some kind of fruit stain.

(Maybe you should have noticed something was wrong when you saw the Opening Ceremony garb)

And when the IOC official from Kenya hands you your bouquet after you receive your gold (?) medal, you notice that it’s a spider plant in a clay pot.  A recycled paper tag tells you no chemicals reside within the container “as grown by Miss Hortense Garshenshire of Pickford”.  As the IOC official spots your surprises, she leans in and whispers, “It’s all natural and locally grown.  It’s environmentally-friendly! Aren’t you so pleased?”

She grins past your shock and moves out of the way so NBC’s cameras can shoot their images up to a satellite launched into space just for international live events and pass them back down to power-hungry antennas and processing stations to transmit them to the world via their expensive and nearly unrecyclable HD televisions.

Yes, it’s indeed a possible scenario for 2012 in London.  The British Olympic minister not only acknowledges that it could well come, but the plants themselves could be wrapped in such stylish packages as recycled paper or hemp twine.

Be sure to mention details such as these to your one-night-stand-to-be tonight so they think you’re both ungodly athletic and environmentally conscious.  This has been a service of SPORTSbyBROOKS and the Ridiculously Overthought Symbolism Foundation.